Jack in the Box (2019) is a movie I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows a family that discovers an antique Jack in the box in their home. Little do they know this Jack in the box unleashes a creature that kills humans to survive. Once they open the box will they ever be able to close it?

This movie is written and directed by Lawrence Fowler (The Ghost Within) and stars Robert Strange (Penny Dreadful), Lucy-Jane Quinlan (Made You Look), Charles Abomeli (Torchwood) and Simon Balfour (Harlots).

This movie had so much potential and dropped the ball. The Jack has fantastic makeup, costumes, mannerisms and sound effects; unfortunately, the kill scenes are super weak, lack gore and should have been more creative. The acting is fairly mediocre and the ending is a bit predictable.

Overall this is a disappointing addition to the horror genre that should have been better. I'd score this a 3/10 and recommend skipping it.

'The Jack in the Box' had the potential to be such an awesome movie, but sadly fails.

The film's score is really good. The sound effects are good. The Jack in the box doll with its haunting eyes, is creepy. The demon clown with its scary make-up is the stuff nightmares are made off. So what went wrong? The script. This is a very basic script, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes its good to have a premise that is simple and straight forward. Only, the dialogue is pretty standard. The characters are not fully explored and not interesting at all. The events are not even interesting. The demon clown appearing for the kill felt deja vu. He had the same demeanor in every scene - and there were times when it seemed they didn't really know what he was supposed to be doing.

The Acting. Boy, the acting was bland. The film looks acted. It didn't feel realistic - as if the actors were saying their lines, and then waiting for the director's "Cut!". It looked like they were doing this for the paycheck, or for experience only. They didn't seem motivated at all. Unconvincing. Lucy-Jane Quinlan especially was really bland as Lisa. Then again, the character itself was such a dull and dreary character that one can't really blame the actress. She hardly served any purpose in the movie until the final moment.

Ethan Taylor stars as the film's hero, Casey, who also didn't really seem like he was taking it very seriously. Maybe the director was to blame, who knows, but the film lacks on too many levels. Had 'The Jack in the Box' been directed by Mike Flanagan or James Wan for instance, I think it would have been a lot better. The film just wasn't as suspenseful or captivating as it could and should have been. The film also looked like it was shot with a home movie camera. The visual effects were also basic and low budget. The main draw card here is the box, which had a great design, and the Jack.

Having said that, it also is not a bad movie. If you can overlook the flaws, sit back and allow to be entertained, I'm sure you'll find something here you like. The clown certainly is memorable, although he, too, could have been far better explored.

Surprisingly, it was followed by a sequel - 'Jack in the Box: Awakening'.

Would I watch it again? No.

I was going to say that The Jack In The Box is the best scary Jack-in-a-box film I have seen, on account of it being the only one, but then I remembered that I had watched Demonic Toys and Dollman vs. Demonic Toys, which aren't great, but are still better than this steaming pile of dung.

The film begins with a weak prologue that doesn't bode well for the rest of the film: a collection of poorly shot scenes sloppily edited together to introduce the 'box', home to Jack, a demonic killer clown who drags victims into his domain. Twelve years after Jack's last appearance, Casey Reynolds (Ethan Taylor) unwittingly unleashes the evil within when he discovers the box amongst donations to the village museum where he works.

Producer/editor/writer/director Lawrence Fowler (Jack of all trades, master of none) repeatedly fails to adequately set up scenes (most notably, a break in at the museum, where we're not even shown the burglars breaking in), and then abruptly cuts away from the action just as things start to get interesting. Despite an intriguing premise, his script is chock full of clichés and features dreadful dialogue, while the lack of any atmosphere or scares makes for a very dull watch.

The best things about the film are its titular box, which is like the lament configuration's big brother - kudos to the prop builder - and the clown itself, an impressively ugly creation who has real potential to be an icon of the genre. It's a real shame that Fowler hasn't the horror know-how to actually make his monster frightening.

After much bloodless tedium, replete with bad acting and more terrible editing, the film closes with a not-very-shocking Drag Me To Hell-style twist ending that is so blatantly telegraphed that even Stevie Wonder would see it coming.

2.5/10 for the box and the clown, rounded down to 2 for being a badly made bore.